03 Oct 24 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine
Last week, Israeli soldiers raided the Al Jazeera office in Ramallah, within the occupied West Bank and ordered the network’s bureau to shut for 45 days.
This is not the first time a media shutdown has happened. In early May, the Israeli army stormed the Al Jazeera bureau in East Jerusalem and closed it after confiscating its equipment, claiming that the network was a threat to Israel’s national security.
An additional two claims were made by Israel this time, which were that the network “incites terror” and “supports terrorist activities”.
Israel has long exercised suppression against the freedom of press and media in the occupied Palestinian territories. Many Palestinian journalists have been killed, attacked, threatened and arrested.
Israel has made Palestinian journalists’ jobs in the occupied territories almost impossible. It’s a constant life threatening situation – on many occasions, Israel has deliberately targeted Al Jazeera journalists and their families.
The sniping of Palestinian-US journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022; the targeting of many other colleagues’ families in Gaza, including my own family; the deliberate killing of Al Jazeera journalists in direct attacks; these all resemble Israeli crimes against press freedom and attempts to silence journalists.
Regardless of the feeling that your press gear labels you as a direct target to the Israeli army, the pain and worry of being a danger to your loved ones is indescribable.
Since October 2023, Israel’s suppression of the press has reached foreign journalists too, as it has prevented all international journalists from exercising their right to cover one of the most brutal wars in recent history.
I believe this is an attempt to avoid exposure of crimes committed against the Palestinians, and the crisis they face.
Al Jazeera as a network has long been a prominent voice in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its presence in the region has always been crucial for a global audience.
The network’s coverage depends on a large number of journalists, bringing together all aspects of the story at once.
Over the years, Al Jazeera has built a reputation for its commitment to telling the story from both sides of the divide. Many people across the world turn their sights to Al Jazeera channels for the latest developments of breaking news stories.
Its coverage isn’t just a reflection of events on the ground – it is an avenue for audiences, globally, to understand the complexities of these events and engage with every story.
The closure of its offices sends a chilling message to the media landscape as a whole.
For years, Al Jazeera has been criticised by Israeli officials for what they allege is biased reporting. Yet, such accusations overlook the network’s fundamental journalistic principle: to show the full spectrum of the story.
I believe that Al Jazeera’s coverage is notably impartial. I say this because it brings to light the narratives of both Israelis and Palestinians, ensuring that no side goes unheard.
Its reporters don’t shy away from broadcasting the pain and suffering endured by civilians on either side of the conflict. Whether it’s an Israeli family mourning after a rocket attack, or Palestinians in Gaza grappling with the aftermath of airstrikes, or settler violence and illegal confiscation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, Al Jazeera’s cameras capture both human realities.
All this is clear in its coverage since the beginning of the Gaza war. On 7 October 2023, my reporting as a Gaza correspondent was on the Palestinian attacks on Israeli towns with complete objectivity. Other stories for my colleagues in Israel highlighted the aftermath of these attacks and the impact on Israeli families.
This objectivity is rare and invaluable in a conflict where misinformation, propaganda, and one-sided narratives often dominate. Where many news outlets have taken up clear ideological stances, Al Jazeera has remained steadfast in its commitment to neutrality. It’s not just about giving airtime to both sides – it’s about letting the facts speak for themselves.
And this, in my opinion, is the true objective of journalism in the first place. Our job as journalists is to inform the public based on facts and evidence, not political agendas.
But to suggest that this impartiality is a threat worthy of office closures is to misconstrue the role of journalism in a so-called “democratic society”. The very essence of free press is to inform the public, to provide transparency, and to hold those in power accountable. Silencing a media outlet like Al Jazeera is a direct assault on these values.
The closure of Al Jazeera’s offices also highlights a troubling double standard. Israeli authorities have allowed other international news agencies to continue their operations, many of which cover the conflict in ways that are far less nuanced or balanced. Yet Al Jazeera, a network that works diligently to present both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives, is being targeted and its journalists are constantly under attack. What does this say about the future of press freedom in Israel and the occupied territories?
05 Sep 24 | Israel, News and features, Palestine
Last week, Israel’s authorities took significant steps on the internal front to narrow political freedom, censor cultural expression and increase the power of police in Israeli society, critics of the most right-wing cabinet in Israel’s history say.
Perhaps the gravest step was the unprecedented closure of the communist party office in Haifa to prevent screening of a new film by controversial Palestinian-Israeli director Mohammed Bakri. Although it was only for 10 hours, human rights lawyers stressed the office closure and film banning were done without a court order, setting a precedent for bigger blows to political groups that displease the coalition or police,
“Police closure of a branch of a party is an action characteristic of dictatorial regimes,” Gilad Kariv, a liberal Jewish legislator wrote on X. “I have reservations about the movie and views of Mohammed Bakri but the attempt to claim that showing the movie represents an immediate danger to public security is a low point and part of a dangerous process.”
A previous Bakri film, Jenin, Jenin, which set in the same locale, the West Bank’s Jenin Refugee Camp in the aftermath of a 2002 Israeli West Bank military operation ordered after suicide bombings, was released later in 2002. After a protracted legal battle, Israel’s high court rejected an appeal by Bakri against a lower court ruling that he had defamed an army officer and upheld a ban on the film, as well as payment of damages of $55,000.
Now, without additional legal ruling or basis, police are also banning the second film, Janin Jenin (Incubations of Jenin), which gives testimonies, some by the same eyewitnesses as in the earlier film, of another Israeli operation against the camp, this time in 2023.
Advocates of censorship say either that the two films are similar or that it doesn’t matter because Bakri is an “antisemite” bent on besmirching Israel. The filmmaker says his goal is to convey an often suppressed Palestinian narrative of life under occupation and the devastation caused to the camp, known as a hotbed of militancy which, as fate would have it, was targeted for another major operation last week.
Shamai Glick, a right-wing activist, took credit for the bans, stressing that police had acted on his complaints. “There is no reason people in Israel and the world should see an antisemitic film just like there is no reason they should see a film that harms the gay community,” he said.
On Tuesday, police ordered the director of a theatre in Jaffa to drop plans to screen Janin Jenin that evening and he complied. Still, Israeli education and culture minister Yoav Kisch called for closure of the theatre through a cutoff of state funding merely because it had planned to show the new movie.
There is more at stake here than the fate of a single film. The absence of court orders required in the past for bannings and the grabbing of more power by the police are seen by left-wing activists as markers on Israel’s trajectory of deterioration into a nascent police state. Their last hope is the moves can be overturned by Israeli attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara, herself a frequent target of the coalition and the right-wing minister in charge of the police, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“It’s one thing if there’s a court order to prohibit a certain artistic event. Then of course police have to enforce it. But if there’s none and they do that out of their own initiative, that’s incredible,” said leading human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who has represented Bakri in the past.
The closure order for the offices of the communist party in Haifa, which was reviewed by Index on Censorship, raises questions about transparency. The document said preventing screening of the film was necessary “to safeguard the security of the public” but did not delineate the alleged threat. It added that showing the film could lead to “disturbances of the public order” but specified that the intelligence information on which the decision was based needed to be kept classified.
The coalition says tougher steps are needed to thwart incitement during the Gaza war that was ignited by Hamas’s brutal attacks on southern Israeli communities on 7 October. This triggered Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Police, for their part, deny any ulterior motive in the recent steps. “The Israel Police operates as an apolitical entity, with our role being to enforce the law rather than create it,” the police spokesman’s office said in response to queries. “Our primary goal is to maintain order and public safety.”
But the more democratic tendencies in Israel view Ben-Gvir as an especially dangerous actor in the government’s ongoing bid to remove checks on its power. This started last year with proposals to undermine the judiciary and is now gaining renewed traction while the public is distracted by war.
The communist party, represented in the Knesset as part of the Hadash grouping, said the closure was ordered just before the film’s screening and limited to 10 hours to preclude the party from going to court to challenge it.
Reem Hazzan, the Hadash leader in Haifa who was interrogated by police before the closure, said the film was to be screened in a closed room in front of about 60 people and followed by the collection of donations for the relief of Gaza civilians. Hazzan says there has never before been such a closure, even when Israeli Palestinians lived under military rule until 1966. She alleged the move follows a pattern of interrogations and threats against Hadash activists for organising demonstrations
Bakri recently told the joint Israeli-Palestinian outlet Local Call that the new film “is the continuation of the first movie Jenin, Jenin but with different timing and circumstances.” He said some of his interviewees who spoke in the first film compared the two incursions. He does not show any soldiers in the new film.
According to Haaretz, it has segments from the first film, a section on Bakri’s legal and personal troubles as a result of the first movie, explanation of the plight of Palestinian refugees since their displacement in 1948 and it gives the most emphasis to Israel’s incursion into Jenin camp last year.
Glick admitted he had not seen the new movie, nor did he think this was necessary. “If Hitler today published a book then I would also come out against it without reading it,” he said.
10 Mar 23 | Hungary, Israel, News and features, Poland, United Kingdom, United States
When the most distinguished former chair of Israel’s Supreme Court, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Aharon Barak, said that he would go before a “firing squad” if it would help prevent what he sees as an existential threat to his country’s democracy, it’s a safe bet he was talking about something momentous.
Barak’s January denunciation of the attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to neuter the Court was just part of what has brought many tens of thousands of Israeli citizens out in unprecedented protests across the country. An impressive array of judicial, political, ex-military and intelligence leaders have warned that Netanyahu’s programme is leading Israel on a path akin to that of authoritarian governments like Hungary and Poland at best, and dictatorship and “fascism” at worst.
The coalition formed on 29 December is easily the most right wing in Israel’s history and includes in key Cabinet posts two religious and avowedly extreme and anti-Arab supremacists, Bezalal Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, both determined that Israel should annex the occupied West Bank. Their appointment adds a volatile new element to a conflict in which 14 Israelis and 70 Palestinians have been killed this year alone.
But it is the “reforms” to the Supreme Court drawn up by Netanyahu’s justice minister Yariv Levin which, opposed by an Israeli majority in opinion polls, have unleashed a wave of outrage on the streets. These include clauses heavily curbing judicial review, removing the criterion of “reasonableness” by which it can judge government decisions, for appointments of the Court to fall under the direct control of the government, and for judgements ruling that a government decision in unlawful or conflicts with semi-constitutional Basic Laws to be overruled by a simple majority in the Knesset (parliament).
The Court is hardly the “overmighty” bastion of liberalism depicted by its critics. Last year, for example, it approved the planned eviction of 1000 southern West Bank Palestinians from their homes purportedly to make way for an Israeli military firing zone. But it remains the last hope for individuals, Jewish or Arab, fighting against unjust decisions, whether legal or administrative. What’s more in Israel’s single parliamentary chamber system the Court is the only check and balance on the executive and the Knesset majority it invariably commands.
The changes to the Court should not be seen in isolation from other measures planned or already in various stages of enactment or proposal. These include allowing the death penalty – unused since the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s execution in 1962 – for Palestinian terrorists, and the power to deprive Arab—though not Jewish—terrorists of residency as well as citizenship. Fears of secular Israelis have been fuelled by calls from ultra-orthodox parties for an end to the ban on segregation of men and women at publicly funded events, while Smotrich has even called for the banning of Arab political parties, representing nearly 20% of the Israeli population. Already under way is a bill to curb the law officers’ power to declare the prime minister unfit to rule. Many Israelis also see the wider judicial reforms partly as an attempt by Netanyahu to escape the possible consequences of his ongoing trial on three corruption charges.
The Netanyahu coalition agreement provides for prohibitively high taxation of Israeli civil-society organisations, several defending Palestinian human rights, which draw funding from mainly European governments, including Britain’s. The measure will not mostly apply to the many right-wing, pro-government advocacy groups because they are mainly funded by rich individuals, especially in the USA.
There has not yet been any legislative attack on Israel’s still fairly vibrant press, albeit in a market dominated by the pro-Netanyahu freesheet Israel Hayom. But writing after the election last October Aluf Benn, editor of the liberal newspaper Haaretz, pointed out that existing legislation for ordering a state of emergency lays down powers for a press clampdown, and suggested that Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir wanted a state “in which criticising the government or replacing it will only be a pipe dream.”
In a sense, however, the changes to the Supreme Court are the programme’s hinge, by severely weakening its right to strike down any of these or other measures because, say, they do not conform with the 1992 Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. Indeed if so far vain attempts by Israel’s President Isaac Herzog fail to secure a compromise on the changes, and the government passes the Court legislation by the end of March as it intends, a major stand-off between it and the Court is in prospect, leaving much of Israel—perhaps even including senior Army figures—having to choose between its recognition of an elected government and its respect for the law as it has prevailed since the state’s foundation 75 years ago.
17 Jan 14 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine
A leading Palestinian human rights activist has claimed that freedom of speech is far greater under the Hamas regime in Gaza than in the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
Khalil Abu Shamala, director of the al-Dameer Centre For Human Rights – which works in both Gaza and the West Bank – said that although there were still occasional arrests of Fatah members, “nowadays we don’t document many violations”.
He noted that this was partly down to Hamas’s weakness in the face of international pressures, particularly the breakdown of relations with the Egyptian regime.
In the past, Hamas has made large-scale arrests of journalists and called many others in for questioning, with opposition activists and bloggers facing harassment.
But although abuses still occurred in Gaza, Abu Shamala said that government forces in the Palestinian Authority–controlled West Bank took much harsher action against critics.
“Freedom of expression in Gaza is better than in the West Bank,” he told Index on Censorship. “We have many cases where the PA arrest and attack people because they criticize them on Facebook, and many Facebookers in the West Bank use alternative names, not their real names. But here, they speak without any harassment by Hamas.”
A rift between Hamas and Fatah, which culminated in the Islamist group seizing power in the Strip in 2007, has led to the creation of two near-separate entities in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas refuses to recognise the Jewish state and is under an embargo by Israel and the international community.
“I don’t know why, but in the West Bank, Palestinian Authority security systems have cooperation and coordination with Israel – and they don’t want to give the opportunity for a third intifada, and they don’t want to allow Hamas or those who are against the Palestinian Authority [to speak out] because they know many of the Palestinians in the West Bank hate the Palestinian Authority,” Abu Shammala continued.
Hamas has previously issued proceedings against Abu Shamala for his outspoken criticism of the Islamist group.
“After they took over Gaza, they wanted from the beginning to impose their Islamic agenda on the society,” he said, adding that his organisations and others had tried to combat these efforts.
The Hamas deputy foreign minister, Ghazi Hamed, denies that his government took any action to silence their critics.
“We are not oppressing people and people can speak loudly, can criticise the government, can criticise Hamas,” said Hamed. “We never put anyone in jail who criticizes Hamas or write something against Hamas. We have different organisations, political parties, even writers, they have full freedom to write what they want.”
